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Chapter 3: Beware! I Am Here to Destroy Your Dreams

Osho,I have heard you say that only Christians dream of Jesus, and followers of Krishna dream only of Krishna. Sannyasins are dreaming of you, Osho. Will you comment?

Dreaming is a substitute for the real.

It is a mind device to console you.

If you have been fasting, you will dream in the night of a feast because the hunger needs food, and without food sleep will be difficult. The mind has to provide you some substitute, that’s what dreaming is. It gives you the feeling that you are no longer hungry; you are eating and you are eating good food, delicious food, food that you like. Now you can sleep without any trouble. The mind has drugged the body through the dream.

But a dream is not reality. You can dream of eating but that is not going to nourish you. The mind can befool the body for the time being but the body is going to suffer. Reality is reality, and you need real food.

A Christian dreaming of Christ, a Hindu dreaming of Krishna, or a sannyasin dreaming of me - all are doing the same thing. It makes no difference of whom you are dreaming; that is irrelevant. Krishna, Christ, Mahavira or Buddha, Zarathustra.you can dream of anybody. The object of the dream is irrelevant, what is significant is that you are dreaming.

So the first thing to be remembered is that there must be a certain hunger behind it, which the mind is trying to fulfill. Read the message clearly: you are not what nature intends you to be; you are missing something immensely important in you; you are not yet your authentic self The dream of Christ, Krishna or me is symbolic. It shows that you are groping in the dark: Who are you? Krishna? Christ? Me? You are none of these people.

So remember that the dream indicates a certain hunger in you. That is the first thing to remember. It is very significant, because all people are not dreaming of Krishna, Christ and me. Millions of people are dreaming of money, millions of people are dreaming of power, prestige. Men are dreaming of women, women are dreaming of men. And the market is vast, you can choose any commodity to dream about. Somebody is dreaming of becoming the president of a country; somebody is dreaming that he has become the president of the country.

Chuang Tzu has a beautiful story about this. And he was a man not to tell a story but to act it. Chuang Tzu is one of the rare beings who have happened on this earth - unique in every way. One morning he awoke and sat up in his bed, very sad. Nobody had ever seen him sad. He was a man of laughter, a very non-serious man. Not only non-serious, he was known as the most absurd man - playing jokes upon himself, upon his people, upon his master, upon his disciples. This too was a joke, but everybody was puzzled because he had never been sad; and they asked, “Why are you sad?”